


Miss You

by AuroraYMK



Category: Power Rangers (2017), The Aurora Cycle - Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff, The Walking Dead: World Beyond (TV 2020)
Genre: Everyone Lives Together, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, New Year's Eve, sidelong Marvel allusions, takes place in a weird crossover megaverse, title from a foster the people song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:08:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28474449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraYMK/pseuds/AuroraYMK
Summary: Aurora tends to the garden and opens up to strangers on New Year's Eve.





	Miss You

Everyone lived together in one house now. It was disconcerting to Aurora, who had spent a week on a spaceship, 200 years drifting through space alone, and 17 years with at most five other people in the house with her at any time. Now she lived in one house with something like thirty people. Granted it was a big house - a _very_ big house, being set up by one of the top 5 richest men in the world will allow that - but it was still cramped at times.

Except for the garden. Aurora was the only one who showed even the slightest interest in using the space. Not even Kal, for all his proclamations of love and _be’shmai_ -ship, could muster up the energy to pretend to be enthused. So Aurora had the garden all to herself, and any time living with thirty other people got to be too much, she would head out to the garden, breath in the fresh air, and be able to relax. Any time, that is, but right now. Aurora had headed to her private space, looking to escape the clamor of the house’s New Year’s party, only to find one of the newest arrivals leisurely walking through, looking at the various potted plants. She involuntarily stiffened up, and the other girl seemed to notice. Aurora noticed her outfit was all yellow, and she stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the green and red of the plants, and then she noticed she was staring.

“You’re… Aurora, right?” _Oh thank god,_ Aurora thought. _She went first._

“Um, yeah. I’m sorry, I’m terrible with names,” Aurora quickly got out while thrusting her hand out for a ‘friendly’ shake. She looked robotic, almost as if she hadn’t greeted anyone in years and was going off of memory on how to do it. “Trinity, right?”

“No, just Trini,” the other girl laughed. “Don’t sweat about it. My crew and I only got here in the last couple weeks. Had some business to wrap up before we moved in.”

“Oh yeah?” Aurora managed to adopt an almost-casual affectation. “Who’d you come with?”

Trini started to count on her fingers. “Jason, Billy, Zack, Kimmy, Alpha-5. You’ve probably seen us around, we’re the primary colour crew?” Aurora remembered seeing a group of five teens arriving in the building, each in an outfit composed entirely of one colour. There had been red, blue, yellow, pink, and black. The sight of it then had made her laugh, and the memory of it now made her laugh again. Trini smirked. “Yeah, it’s lame until you try it. Everybody remembers someone who was all yellow. It’s like in that song, you know?” She whistled the first few bars of an old Coldplay song off-key, and Aurora swore she could feel her heart start to swell. Just as the moment came into fruition, a beeping noise from deeper in the garden drew Aurora’s attention away. She glanced over at the source, seeing that a clock had hit 11:55pm.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “There’s something I gotta do.” Aurora navigated around Trini, heading towards a small shed. “You should go back in and enjoy the party, Trini.”

“Nah, it’s fine,” Trini said, leaning against a lamppost. _This house is so big,_ Aurora thought, _it has its own lampposts!_ “I don’t like big parties. And at this point I don’t think Bruce throws anything but.”

“Well, I don’t care,” another voice called out. “He gives large parties and I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.” Trini peered into the murky darkness that existed between lampposts while Aurora silently cursed over having the misfortune of now having two uninvited guests within her space.

“Is that you, Hope?” Trini asked. “And is that from Gatsby? I didn’t expect you to be into the classics.”

Hope Bennett strolled into the light and wrapped Trini in a hug. “What’s not to like?” she asked. “There’re big parties, people drink a lot and drive too fast, and everyone’s wearing tight suits and minidresses. It’s my kind of story.”

“I swear,” Trini rolled her eyes. “For a hardened survivor of the zombie apocalypse, you love that Roaring 20s aesthetic way too much.”

“Everybody’s got their quirks,” Hope said. “What are you doing out here? The ball’s about to drop.”

“I could make a joke about that, but I won’t,” Trini said. “I was just out here talking to Auri.” As the two chatted, Aurora returned from the shed holding a bulb. “What do you got there?”

“A white tulip,” Aurora muttered. She walked over to a section of the garden where a couple white tulips had been planted in an otherwise empty square of dirt and knelt down, starting to dig.

Hope followed behind loosely, and sat up on the edge of a flower box. “Look, I’ve seen enough rituals of whatever type to recognize when I see one, and you’re planting a specific flower at exactly midnight on New Year’s. What does it mean? Is it for anyone?”

Aurora turned slightly, tearing up before blinking it back. “I don’t think I want to talk about it.”

“Look, unless you talk about it it’ll eat you up forever. I held something secret for 10 years once. I wouldn’t recommend it. If it matters, I promise I won’t tell anyone. And I’ll tell you my secret too, just to sweeten the pot.”

Aurora placed the bulb in the dirt and covered it up just as the clock turned 12.

“They’re for Cat.”

Trini sat next to Hope now, placing her arm around Hope’s shoulders. “Who was she?”

“She… Well, I don’t even know. I’m not even sure we were friends. We knew each other, at least. You’d have to talk to Tyler or Scarlett to get a good idea, but… She saved my life. Multiple times.” Aurora knelt up, turning to face Trini and Hope.

“But you couldn’t save her,” Hope said.

“Yeah. But… I know she’s still out there, in the time I came from. She’s not dead, it was some kind of hive mind, and I think she’s still in there somewhere. And I don’t know what she’s thinking…” Aurora’s voice trailed off.

“I don’t know what happened,” Trini said. “But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t your fault.”

“Sometimes, people don’t make it back. There’s no blame. It’s just… a dangerous world out there. Even moreso for people like us,” Hope mused.

“I know. I know, but… The last time I ever saw her, the Ra’haam was getting into her. I looked at her, and she looked back, and… There was a tulip where her eye should’ve been. It was purple. I thought for a second that that meant she was the queen of… whatever was inside her. But I don’t think that was the case. Everytime I think about her, I just see that flower. I see her… wandering around a dead planet, nothing of Cat left in her, just… a puppet. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain, I guess.”

Hope stepped off the box and knelt down next to Aurora. “No, I get it. I’ve never seen someone turn, but I’ve seen empties up close. And everytime I see them, I always think that they used to be a person, that they were something before they were just a hollowed out person shell for… something else. And I’m guessing it was like that for you. God, I couldn’t imagine seeing someone I knew. I think I’d just break down and cry.” She wiped her face, finding she was already crying. “I’m crying just thinking about it. You’re doing better than me.”

Aurora fumbled in her pocket, pulling out a small tablet. “Silent mode,” she muttered, to a disapproving frowny face on the screen. She pulled up a picture that had been taken of Squad 316 before they had headed to Octavia III, and pointed to Cat, indicating her to the other two girls. “That’s her, right there.”

Trini squinted at the picture, taking in her image. “What’s that on her neck?”

Aurora giggled, the flow of her tears interrupted. “A phoenix tattoo. It’s all across her throat. Over her voice box and everything.”

Trini whistled, impressed. “How the hell did she do that?”

“Very carefully, I’d say,” Hope said. “You should try it.”

Trini put up her hands. “Even I’m not brave enough for that one. Cat wins.”

Aurora grinned. “You gotta ask Tyler to see the dragon.”

“A dragon? Like a real one?” Hope gaped.

Trini shook her head. “No, that was Illyana’s deal.”

‘Yeah, it’s just a stuffed dragon,” Aurora nodded. “But she took it everywhere. It was her lucky charm. And now we take it everywhere. So… I guess we keep a part of her with us.”

“See?” Hope knocked Aurora on the shoulder. “Talking about it helps you process. Learned that from my therapist, before she died. So what’s the deal with the flowers?”

Aurora sighed. “I decided to plant two of these a year. One on Cat’s birthday, and one on New Year’s. They’re white, for forgiveness, since it was technically my fault she got… well, let’s just call it killed, I guess.”

Trini suddenly snapped up Aurora in a hug. “You’re taking the last memory you have of her and making it a symbol of love? That’s so sweet,” she said.

“Now I feel like leaving a necklace at Mom’s grave was inadequate,” Hope joked.

“T-Thanks. I… didn’t realize how good talking about it would feel,” Aurora said.

“Nobody ever does til they do it,” Hope shrugged.

“Do you guys want to go inside?” Trini asked. “It’s starting to get cold out.”

Aurora glanced at the soil. The last time she had done this, she had knelt by the dirt for three hours, racked with guilt. “Yeah, let’s go,” she said. “I want to see how it is inside.”

Hope glanced at Aurora. “You know, I told you I’d tell you my secret. I don’t want to make you think that was hot air.”

“Don’t worry about it. Tell me when it’ll be most cathartic,” Aurora smiled.

Hope laughed as the three girls started to head back inside. “Sure. Sure, I’ll keep that in mind.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if the setting and the "why" of these characters being together is thinly sketched/non-existent. I wanted to get this character-based moment down before dealing with the lore of how it happened. But that'll come along at some point.


End file.
